No weird non-sequiter bullshit. None of that teenage-girl penguin humor. Seriously, penguins? Well, whatever. This is happening, so don't fight it. And now I'm a rapist.

-

"Okay, clothes, water, beef jerky and stuff," Zuko checked off his list while Katara loaded then into his car.

"Is beef jerky all we're bringing?" Katara heaved a cooler into the backseat.

"No, there's fruit, chips, and assorted fruit roll-ups in there." He motioned to the cooler with his pen. "Oh, and candy. I bought a big bag of candy."

"Why did you put the chips in the cooler? Are they like ice chips or something?"

"It's not that funny. Don't laugh. That isn't funny. Where the hell are Sokka and Aang?" The Firelord paced around his car impatiently.

"I'm right here!" Sokka jogged across the parking lot from behind the apartment building, patting a smoldering circle on his shoulder.

"What's wrong with your shirt?" Katara breathed, brushing hair out of her face and leaning against the open car door.

"Nothing. Are we ready?" Sokka said triumphantly.

"Yeah. We need to leave about- fifteen minutes ago," Zuko read off quickly from the itinerary on his clipboard. "Where is Aang?"

Just then a blue glider made a lazy circle above the trio and the Avatar dropped from the sky with a graceful twirl of his glider. "Here I am. Are we ready?"

Zuko hissed sharply. "Yeah, Aang, you can't take that."

"What, my glider?" The boy gripped his shaft tighter in surprise.

"I'm sorry, it's just that there's no room in the car."

"But, can't we put it on the roof?"

"Sorry."

"You can put it in our room," Katara sighed, standing up from the car. "Just, um, lock the door please."

"Come on, we need to hit the road."

Aang sulked inside the palace. Zuko read down the list again quickly. "Ok, that should do it. We'll wait for him and then go."

"SHOTGUN!" Sokka screamed about 17 billion times louder than absolutely necessary. Katara and Zuko each winced at the sudden noise.

"Ok, sure," mumbled Zuko.

"Whatever," Katara sighed. She climbed into the back seat behind Sokka.

The Avatar shuffled out of the apartment sadly. The Firelord climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. Then Aang came in.

"Sorry Aang, but there's just no room in the car. And besides, I really don't think that we'll come into a problem we can't solve without your staff."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Aang buckled up as Zuko maneuvered out of the parking lot.

The car reached the road and Zuko waited for the other drivers to pass.

"Oh, wait!" Sokka cried, reaching down to go through his bag. "I made a mix tape for the drive!" He lifted the tape out and slammed it into the tape deck.

"NO SLEEP 'TILL BROOKLYN!-" Zuko slapped the eject button, yanked the tape from the player, and threw it out his window, all while flooring it out of the parking lot and on to the main road.

A part of the magnetic tape had caught on to the inside of the mechanism, and it trailed out the window across his forearms as Zuko accelerated to 35, 40, and 50 miles an hour. The cassette trailed behind the car like a soup can after a wedding, then finally disconnected.

Sokka gaped in abject shock. "What the hell? I spent three days recording those songs!" Aang and Katara tried not to laugh out loud in the back seat.

"That's as it is, but the Beasty Boys? What are you, twelve?"

"I had like, fifteen songs on there." Sokka whined.

"Yes, but the Beasty Boys?" Zuko spun the car through the intersection. "Sokka, we have a 3,000 mile road trip ahead of us. I don't want to want to kill you in the first- one fifth of a mile."

"Well, now we have nothing to listen to." He leaned back and crossed his arms.

Katara suddenly went, "Oh! -uh, oh."

"What is it, Katara?" Zuko asked.

"I brought some CD's, but your car doesn't have a CD player." She set her bag back on the floor.

Zuko shifted in his seat. "I'm sorry."

"You'd think that the Firelord could afford a nicer car," Sokka butted in.

"I like this car. She's part of the family." Zuko patted the faux leather of the center console.

-

"I'm hungry."

Zuko gripped the steering wheel tightly and slightly angled his torso towards Sokka. "Are you for real?"

"Yeah. I'm hungry."

"Sokka," Zuko began, licking his lips, "we've been driving for fifteen minutes. We left your apartment a quarter of an hour ago."

There was a weird pause for about three seconds. Then, "So, do we have any food?"

"Uhg," Zuko groaned. "Yeah."

"Chips, jerky, fruit roll-ups, and this weird candy from the Fire Nation," Katara listed.

"Fireballs are like, the greatest candy ever!" Zuko almost yelled defensively.

"Candy should be sweet or sour, not spicy."

Sokka reached back for the bag. "I'll try them."

Katara placed one in his hand. Fireballs are like jawbreakers, but spicy. "Aang, do you want one?"

"No thanks."

"I want one," Zuko said.

8 seconds passed. Suddenly, "Ow. Ow ow ow ow." Sokka spit the fireball into his hand and threw it out the window.

"Sokka, please don't throw stuff out of the windows. I may have Diplomatic Immunity here, but littering is rude."

"How do your people choke those down?" Sokka madly scraped his tongue off with a napkin he grabbed from the floor.

"I don't know. They're just good, I guess." Zuko muttered. "Also, that's been down there almost a week."

Katara cleared her throat. "I'll stick with these," she said, lifting a bag of chips.

Another twenty minutes passed.

"That's where I got your player, Aang." Zuko pointed out different stores as they left the city. "And that place right there is the only place I could find that new Mötley Crüe album."

"Zuko, I'm dying. Can you roll down the windows please?" Katara moaned.

"Katara, I told you. Your window is stuck shut and the air conditioning makes the windshield wiper fluid boil. Why don't you bend some water into ice?"

Katara shrugged and bent the sweat pooling on her skin into a layer of frost. "Great idea. Thanks."

"Where did the energy go?" Sokka said from the front seat. I imagined him eating a sandwich for some reason.

"Sokka, where did you get that sandwich?" Zuko grumbled.

"Oh, I brought it."

"Why didn't you eat it twenty minutes ago? When you said you were hungry?"

"I didn't want to eat it the second we hit the road. I wanted to make it last."

"THAT WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR AGO!" Zuko shrieked while swerving across four lanes of traffic in rage.

"Jesus Zuko, calm the fuck down! You just cut off an ambulance!" shouted Katara.

Zuko cleared his throat, settled into his seat, and continued as if he didn't just endanger the lives of thirty one people and two dogs.

"Yeah Zuke. Calm down. I would have made you one if you had asked."

"Zuko, you're making the vinyl on the steering wheel melt. Calm down."

Zuko pulled his hands off the wheel for a second to see two handprints melted into the plastic material around it. Strings of melted vinyl clung to his hands as he lifted them away.

"I still have no idea why I brought you along, Sokka. I'm still trying, but I can't do it." Zuko grumbled.

"Uhh... Because you love me?"

Zuko gave up and sighed.

-

SWAZONK. That's the sound a chapter makes when you end it. It's always just too quiet to hear. It's always obscured by you clicking the review button to go "NERD RAGE HURR AHHH ZUTARA GRRRR".